Project Management is an integral activity across company operations. When dealt adeptly it surely helps companies grow, add more clients and expand their market footprint. There are multiple moving parts in play as the business grows which become difficult to manage with time.

Project management software is a great way to contain the challenges associated with growth and change.

Few of the most common and evident issues that organizations face are listed below. And if your team, business unit or company is facing them too then it is time you get the right project management tool in place when there is still time.

1. Silo Business Processes, Silo Teams, Silo Tools!

The industry synonym for Project Management tool has been Excel sheets for a long time and continues to be so even to this day for many organizations. Excel spreadsheet in itself is a good option for maintaining lists but fails to match the operational speed and needs of a highly mobile and digital workforce.

And they cannot provide some of the relevant project management aspects such as task and time management and real time data & feedback sharing.

Another issue that most companies face is their business units working in silos and restricted by their silo processes. This adds a humongous ask from the team members in terms of keeping the individual tools in sync. Easily translated – manual intensive and repetitive work!

Not only this, modern teams hate to have to manage multiple tools for each single activity. This leads to loss of precious productive efforts in maintaining those tools rather than on revenue generating activities.

Imagine if

you have to update your tasks in one tool

time spent on those tasks in another

account and billing team then bringing the above 2 items into their billing tool

finally re-entering consolidated data into a place where all project data is managed.

And add to it useless administrative efforts that can be easily done away with.

Phew! I don’t want to be in a place like this! Do you?

2. Breakdown of Communication and Collaboration!

Communication is the easiest aspect of our lives in today’s world. Yet we fail to reap its benefits!

Businesses, relationships and lives are lost and saved with timely and rightful communication.

Businesses have outgrown themselves in a lot of ways and have breached the great geographical divide a long time ago and rightfully so. In its wake, they have connected people across continents but have failed in maintaining the right communication lines.

Running operations with team from different time zones, diverse beliefs, faith and languages pose interesting challenges –

If you are amidst the above chaos look for a project collaboration tools that allow you to communicate inside the platform with

Instant email & desktop notifications & instant chat.

File attachments, document sharing along with audit trail

Entire task activities and messaging streams clearly indicating who did what when and what version of what file someone is working on at any point in time.

A quick daily catch-up mechanism to share progress of the day instantly and on the move

Preferably a web-based solution backed with intuitive mobile apps.

The idea is to gift your teams proper communication channels that are easy to use, intuitive and accessible anywhere and anytime they need them.

3. Missing Deadlines, Consistently!

Project management in essence is about maintaining balance among time, quality and cost. And the heart of this balancing act lies in managing your people and their time efficiently.

Once well managed, your capital management becomes a piece of cake!

We all very thoroughly know – Time in Money! But inadvertently fail to understand and manage it well.

If your current operations & processes are not supportive of timely delivery then it’s imperative you implement a project management system right away.

Because it is a matter of time before you start to lose face with your clients, profits decline, outrun by your competitors big and small who have got the “balancing act” right and possibly out of business entirely.

Opt for a solution that enables

Smooth task and milestone management

Easier time tracking and logging for your teams

Granular and visible insights into your resources’ time spent

Helps indicate possible delays

Clear and efficient project schedule management

A project management system with above capabilities will help keep everyone on the same page, improve communications, and put the team on track to timely deliveries with high quality and possible lower operational costs.

4. Execution Paralysis: No one knows who is doing what?

We are always involved with multiple projects at the same time and as a Project Manager or business owner it becomes increasingly difficult to track, assign and manage tasks and resources.

We are consistently fighting with the situation where –

Tasks remain unassigned

Resources remain unassigned

While some resources are overloaded

Task progress is halted or delayed

No visibility to overdue tasks let alone timely execution

In the end, no clarity on execution, accountability and absolute lack of ownership

It is evident that such an operational mess is a breeding ground for demotivated employees, inefficient execution and loss of productivity.

If you are a part of or witness to such conditions then you are in dire needs of a platform that help defines

Clear task assignment and due dates

Estimated hours required for task execution

Direct correlation between estimated and spent hours

Granular view of who did what, when, for how long and what is pending

Visibility of your task progress and completion status

This will simplify task and workload management and prevent your smart, hardworking and efficient resources from being burned out. And lastly, lead to higher employee motivation, productivity and ownership.

5. No Work-Life Balance!

People are the heart and soul of businesses. Profitable businesses make it a point to provide optimum work-life balance to their employees and rightfully so.

A burnt out and demotivated employee has a huge and direct impact on the company’s bottom-line.

Imagine what an unit or business would look like with their entire workforce not willing to contribute efficiently?

Most of us have heard about the concept of meetings before and after meetings! A humongous toll on our share of productive hours. Meetings if not held well are tremendous time killers.

Next comes lack of visibility to the team’s assignments and workload. Often times, managers ignore the booked calendars during task assignment leading to unrealistic deadline setting thereby adding to stress and resentment to the teams.

And we cannot blame them for this. You cannot manage what you cannot measure (see)!

If you have teams whiling their time on social media platforms, water cooler discussions and foosball tables while certain members are finding it hard to get their tasks done then there is a serious risk to your business and project.

Always ensure you have a project management software that provides

Clear resource availability – know who is available when and for how long

Ability to apply and manage leaves of the project members

Single platform where the entire team can see who is on leave, when, for how long and who is overloaded and needs help.

With these 3 crucial abilities, you and the team can plan your project execution to perfection.

Everyone knows their tasks, dependencies on other tasks or team members as well as availability of the team as a whole.

This means people know when they can seek and offer help from whom and for how long. It makes people open to collaboration and fosters team spirit.

All members are willing to contribute more because they know they can take their planned leaves or disburse time to matters closer to their hearts other than work whenever they want.

This helps remove stress from the workplace, enables team members to plan their professional and personal engagements with agility and leads to higher employee morale and happiness.

About Orangescrum

As a software development company, we know the pain of managing projects via emails. We wanted a software/tool - to manage projects more efficiently, to have quick communications and to become more productive.